Robi, Bikroy and Sponsored Web Pass

Robi, Bikroy and Sponsored Web Pass

Opera Software and TIM Brazil have been working together since 2010 to bring the full web experience to TIM Brazil customers through the Navegador TIM mobile browser, based on Opera Mini.

Background

In February 2015, Opera Software teamed up with Robi, one of the leading telecom providers in Bangladesh, to offer free mobile data through the Opera Web Pass solution, where “free Internet for 12 hours” web passes that were sponsored by Bikroy.com, Bangladesh’s largest marketplace for buying and selling online, were offered to Robi’s users.

Opera Software, Robi and Bikroy.com: Getting more people online in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is one of the fastest-growing internet markets in the world. Only a few years ago, the number of active internet users was close to zero; today it is close to 41 million. It is evident that the country is moving away from a predominantly feature-phone- driven voice and data services market, to a more connected society with cheap smartphones and affordable high-speed internet becoming more readily available. The mobile broadband pene- tration rate of 5% (0.2% in 2014) is moving in the right direction, but there is still a lot of work to be done to connect the remaining unconnected.

In February 2015, Robi launched the “Free Internet Coupon”, powered by Opera Software’s Opera Web Pass solution. By using the existing capabilities of the Opera Mini platform, such as data compression, operators are able to provide their users the possibility to browse much more within a set data limit, compared to those using other mobile browsers.

By allowing Bikroy.com—the largest online marketplace in Bangladesh—to sponsor “12 hour free Internet”* passes to Robi’s customers, Robi was able to offer its users the possibility to try out the mobile internet for free.To avail of the “12 hour free Internet”* offer, all Robi users had to do was open the Opera Mini browser on their phones and click the “Free Internet Coupon” Speed Dial button, which opened an activation page from where users could activate the coupon, which was sponsored by Bikroy.com. Robi users who did not already have the Opera Mini browser installed on their phones could visit m.opera.com to download the free app.

After the 12 hours expired, or the 5MB volume limit was reached, users were given the opportunity to continue browsing the internet by purchasing easy-to-understand, affordable internet packages from Robi. This gave Robi the opportunity to retain these new mobile internet users and turn them into paying mobile-data users. Bikroy.com benefitted by getting its ads in front of Robi’s users at the start, during and at the expiration of the no-cost data package, which helped increase brand awareness, as well as drive a large volume of targeted users directly to their online portal.

Bikroy.com set the following goals for the Sponsored Web Pass campaign:

Drive traffic to their online marketplace

Boost brand awareness

Creating a buzz

To boost awareness, interest around the Bikroy.com Sponsored Web Pass, Robi and Opera carried out the following promotional tactics:

The onboarding page provided information to the consumer about the “free Internet for 12 hours” offer sponsored by Bikroy.com.

When users selected the “Free Internet Coupon”, they could start 12 hours* of browsing the internet from their mobile phones at no charge. Throughout the 12-hour period, users were presented with different ad interstitials from Bikroy.com to promote its portal.

Campaign results

By sponsoring “12 hours of free internet” web passes, Bikroy.com was able to gain exposure of its brand in an inconspicuous way, while driving large amounts of traffic to its portal, in addition to associating itself with something extremely valuable to the consumer: free access to the internet. During the campaign period, the click-through rates for Bikroy.com’s banners and interstitial ads were substantially higher than click-through rates for advertising campaigns ran by Bikroy.com prior to the Sponsored Web Pass campaign with a click-through rate of almost 5% on the store-front banner ad.

Conclusion

Getting online, especially for the first time, can be a confusing, multi- step, and error-prone process for consumers. Opera’s Sponsored Web Pass makes access to the mobile internet a streamlined, easy- to-understand process.Opera’s Sponsored Web Pass lets brands and operators work together to sponsor the cost of customers’ mobile internet access as an incentive to attract new mobile-data users, while allowing operators to increase their data plan revenues by participating in ad-revenue monetization. By providing something extremely valuable to consumers: free internet access, brands are able to reach new users while driving traffic to their websites or getting users to download their apps.